Hank's New Beginning
by CapLovesHankandKel
Summary: Hank has had a change of career in the Fire Service! For Sashi 4040 who wanted a light hearted story, this one's for you. No handicapped kids and Hank's in canon as much as possible here. Follow his new adventure won't you? Then R/R because I can take it. :-


**A New Beginning**

**By: CapLovesGregandJames**

**A/N I really like helicopters. I live about seven miles from our local hospital and very often hear Life Flight choppers going over my neighborhood. I "chase" them when I have time and find them totally fascinating.**

**So, one day, I had a picture of Hank Stanley come through my mind sitting in the pilot's seat and I was inspired to write this. Hopefully this will accepted OK because I know the idea isn't exactly canon but Hank himself will be in canon as much as possible. This is done entirely in his POV.**

**As much as I'd like to, I don't own Emergency! or its characters. They belong to Mark IV productions.**

Hank Stanley. Pilot. Life Flight 1. KTK 3122. This started five years ago and it was the most unexpected career change to say the very least! I'm too young to retire and have no desire to hang it up just yet. So I sort of stumbled on to it and have really enjoyed it a great deal.

Here's how it all started. I was still Captain at Station 51 when, just for the heck of it, I was browsing through the open jobs within the fire service and seen then needed air ambulance pilots and were even willing to train said pilots. So I thought about it and bounced it around in my head first then with my wife Anneliese and my two boys David and Andrew and the more we talked about it, the more I wanted to give it a shot.

So, we made the decision together as a family, that I was going to purse becoming a pilot. After that decision was made, I broke the news to my beloved crew that their Captain got a different calling within the Fire Department in the form of an air ambulance pilot. They were quite shocked at first but once that wore off, they were really supportive of me and stood behind me one thousand percent.

No one was more shocked than Chief McConnike but he was very supportive which really meant a great deal to me.

My last day with the crew of 51's was a cross between very sad and very happy. They sent me out in style and I promised them we would be friends to the end. They also wanted me to promise them that I would stay in touch with them and to keep them posted on my progress and I told them I would keep both promises to them, which I did.

One week later, I started my new career. I was excited on one hand and nervous as hell on the other. There was so much to learn and I wondered if I was in over my head more than once! At that point, experience wise, the only thing I had going for me was leadership. That was important because a pilot must possess that quality.

That and being a team player and the desire to learn which I had with a passion. And I can't leave out sense of direction! That was at the top of the list!

I remember the first time I saw the cockpit. To say it was overwhelming was putting it mildly. Again, the thought if I was in over my head crossed my mind. Gauges, switches, levers and buttons! As I sat in the cockpit and got a bird's eye view of it, I was blown away at the thought that once my training was done, I would know what every one of those gadgets meant and what they did!

But first it was bookwork and a great deal of it. Learning about the helicopter, itself. The mechanics and safety. The gauges, switches, leavers and buttons. Spending time in flight simulators. More book work. Many tests oral and written. More time in the flight simulator. Tests with it as well.

Then integrating the role of the pilot and the air ambulance and saving lives in a timely fashion. Also learning my role with my crew and when to assist both in the air via relay and on the ground. I was of course introduced to my crew. My Co-Pilot was Colt Martin and I also had two registered flight nurses that rounded out the crew. Yoshi Lee and Luce Lopez (no relation to Marco!)

They were extremely nice and helpful and I told Colt with all his knowledge he ought to be a pilot instead of a co-pilot and he said "No thanks! I love what I do in the seat I'm in. That seat belongs to you." So that pretty much set the stage of our working relationship which has been a fantastic one with all of them.

The first time I took to the sky, the crew of 51's had the day off and I invited them out to watch. They were so excited and all they said was they just could not imagine their Captain in the pilot's seat of an air ambulance. I was prepared to fly but nervous as hell the first time I took to the sky.

Each time, it got easier but I will never forget the first initial time. My heart was beating rapidly and I know my hands were shaking. Colt told me my reaction was "pretty normal" because he remembered being "ready to jump out of his skin" too his first time around.

The crew cheered me as I left and as I landed. They asked what it was like to "drive" a helicopter and I told them it was totally different from driving "Chow Baby" (the Engine; I have four pet chow dogs so I called my Engine "Chow Baby," "Chow Child," or "Child of Chow" depending on my mood and circumstances at the time!)

They asked if they could take a quick peek at the cockpit and I allowed them to do that. Mike said "Whoa!" and that was pretty much the reaction of the rest of the crew. They all said "Better you than us." I told them it wasn't all that bad once I got to know it. But it took some time getting there.

Finally, the day came when I got "My Wings" otherwise known as my Pilot's License. It was a proud, happy day indeed and Anna threw a big party, inviting friends, family, new and old crew too. Colt's wife made the cake and it was amazing. She made a helicopter on the cake and I just wanted to enshrine the cake so to speak.

I hated cutting it because it was such a work of art so I took a crap load of pictures of it before we butchered it. To this day, I have a ten by thirteen picture of it up in my den at home. It reminds me of the hard work and the great time we had at the party.

Five years later, life is good. I made a good choice in becoming a pilot. Of course, one of the receiving hospitals is Rampart and Kel (Brackett) said it was going to take a little bit to get used to me in a Pilots Uniform and role. We work twenty four hour shift so I was used to that going in.

If I was to take a guess in the last five years how many patients we lost I'd say about twenty. We just couldn't save them, hard as we tried. And a couple of them were children. It's hard enough to lose a patient but when they are kids it's double tough even though we knew it is an ever-present possibility. The feelings of regret and helplessness aren't any different from my Captain's days.

I've met a lot of different people in my "new" profession and I love the variety. We've seen many different predicaments people get themselves into and I think the most memorable flight to date had to have been when a new mother lost newborn baby en route and once we landed, for some reason, the mother wanted to talk to me and asked me a very profound question.

And I quote verbatim "What kind of God would do that?" and I told her first how very sorry I was for her loss and told her I wished it had turned out differently. Every now and then when things like that happen, I wonder if I could have done more i.e. flown faster or something! As far as a reason, I had no idea. I told her at times like this I wished at times like that I was privy to that information but sadly I wasn't.

She broke down and I held her while she cried. I have to admit my eyes were plenty misty along with the rest of the crew. That was one tough moment. And one unforgettable moment as well.

But not to say we haven't had any fun times because we have. I remember the first time I flew into some very unexpected high winds. I remember how the helicopter was rocking side to side like being tossed in water only we were being tossed in mid-air by the winds!

That was one wild experience. Landing it was even crazier because it was at night and things change quickly in the night. But we got through it OK.

Another wild experience we had was a call at a psychiatric hospital. We were picking up a victim that attempted suicide and was in very serious condition. Well, as we were coming in to land, there was a person that got way too close to the landing zone and we couldn't land her because if we would have, there was a good chance of that person being beheaded by the top rotor blades!

We wondered if we had another suicidal person on our hands at that point. So, we had to hover for about five to ten minutes until security escorted the person out of the danger zone so to speak. Thankfully, the hovering and delay didn't do any damage to the initial suicidal patient. They survived the flight.

One more fun story and I'll move on. At least we think it's pretty humorous. Looking back, it wasn't at time! We got a call to transport a donated heart to another hospital to a patient that was being prepared for surgery and the idea was to get the heart to the Operating Room so they could drop it right into the waiting patient but it didn't quite work out that way.

We had to wait over an hour because the Lab at the hospital where the heart was and where we landed we were told they lost the dam thing! All we could do was shake our heads in pure disgust. By a miracle of God, the heart was finally found and we got it to the patient in the literal nick of time.

The surgeon, when the operation was done, called the Director of Life Flight and chewed him a whole new asshole and the Director told him we were not responsible instead the hospital donating the organ was. So shit hit the fan at that hospital and a few jobs were lost. That was a real fiasco.

We still talk about it to this day and we still cannot figure out how the Lab could have lost a donated organ and one as important as that! As Colt put it so aptly at the time "Someone was asleep at the wheel that night and it sure wasn't us!"

So as one can see, I've had some real adventures as a Pilot. Anna used to be really scared at first with me in "the great wide open" as she calls it but she's adjusted well. She always prays for everyone's safety when I'm on my way to HQ and I must say God has been very good to us all.

I really love doing what I do. I can't see me retiring any time soon because I love it too much. All I can do is keep on keeping on and pray for and thank God for every safe trip.

End

**A/N: The stories of the person that got too close to the landing zone and the story about the lost donated heart are true stories. I used to know a Life Flight crew really well and they shared those stories with me. I saw the high wind episode and it was totally amazing. Also, when the Lab people apologized to the crew for losing the heart, one of the pilots quipped "It's OK. We get paid $200 an hour to do this." I thought I must surely be in the wrong profession and this was in the late 80's!**


End file.
